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I work in one of the most dangerous jails in the state, and the biggest issue for me and my fellow officers is keeping drugs out of the hands of the inmates. You might think the jail is a tough place to score drugs, but inmates will tell you that they can score just about any type of drug they want in the jail easier than they could when they were roaming the streets.

To stop the flow of the drugs in our jail, we have several things we must do day after day. First, we must open each piece of mail that comes for the inmates. They have become quite crafty and liquifying drugs, coating the paper with the liquid, and then inmates get high simply eating the paper.

Monitoring visitors as they walk in the jail to see the inmates is where we score the majority of illegal contraband. Even knowing they face jail time if caught, visitors will risk it, especially if ordered by a high-ranking gang member in jail. Those lower-level gang members jump at the chance to try to smuggle in the drugs because they earn credibility with other gang members.

A new resource for us came in the most unlikely ways. Securus Technologies installed a modernized phone system that was now able to pick up unique conversations between inmates and people on the outside. We thought we could target the top gang members, but the software was more that any of us expected. It alerted us to conversations inmates had about hiding drugs in their cells, which inmates were meeting people who were smuggling things into the jail, and even where certain drugs were being hidden and used during the day.